The next step

In my previous blog I told you how we started our lives together, in this blog I am going to take some parts of a diary that I kept for a couple of months while we were finding out that we were truly meant for each other. Can you belive it, we lived just around the block from each other growing up, I lived on First St. and Delbert lived on 2nd St.

actually I did not start the diary until January of 1959 so I will try to jar my memories of almost 50 years ago. It will not be in any type of order, just some of the things that we did together. Delbert was already in the Marine Corp and had been for over a year. That is why I really did not see him too much in the first part of 1958. Delbert was a ladies man and he had all the girls following after him and of course being male he had to brag to his fellow Marines that everyone in National City knew him all they had to do was ask any girl on the street and they could direct them to where he lived. Well let me tell you a story about that one. It was before the 4th of July and before we became a couple and I was very low on his radar, remember I was not his type of girl. There was a liquor store up at 8th and National and they had a section for magazines, books and comic books, instead of going to church like I was suppose to, I used to head over there and read comic books, well anyway, in comes about 3 Marine's and of course they flirt with me and out of the blue they ask me if I knew a Feliz who lived somewhere in National City, He was a buddy of theirs. And of course I said I sure do, I can even take you to his house....you can imagine what that did to Delbert's big head, yep it got bigger and it was "I told you so" hahahahahha......it was several months after that we met up in July.
When school started in Sept we were going "steady" and on Friday's he would get off work and drive about 75 miles home (he was stationed at Camp Pendleton CA) and he would make it just in time to pick me up, sometimes he did not have a vehicle and we would take buses to downtown San Diego and go to the movies. Anyway, I am getting ahead of myself a bit. We started talking the "M" word but I was a junior in high school and knew we would not be able to be married for at least another year, but that did not stop us from dreaming and planning. There was a little jewerly store that I used to stop at on my way home from school and the older couple in the store used to let me try on this beautiful solitare wedding set, I loved that ring, well I finally talked Delbert into going to the store and showed him the ring, he wanted to buy me a ring with lots of diamonds and he used to bring rings home from the PX to show me, but I had my heart set on this set. One day I went in the store to try on my ring and the lady said I am so sorry, but this young couple came in and they fell in love with the ring, I was so broken hearted over that. Well guess what I got for Christmas that year? MY RING,,,,,,,it was official we were engaged.

During our dating period in the summer it was not easy for Delbert, everytime he would come to the house to pick me up my father would yell out Pancho is here for you, Delbert never said anything, just smiled his little smile and he was always polite to my parents even though they were really rude to him. That went on for several dates and finally Delbert could not hold it in anymore and he asked me if I knew what Pancho meant in Spanish, of course I said no. He laughed and said your father is calling me Frank, yep, Pancho means Frank and my father's name is Frank, so of course when I went home I asked my father if he knew what he was calling Delbert when he called him Pancho and of course I had to tell him that he was calling him Frank, well let me tell you that was the last time my father called him Pancho.....
This is all for today, I will write more tomorrow now that my blogger is working again.